Updated December 23, 2025

Toronto City Council has made firm commitments to cut carbon emissions and protect us from climate change. These commitments were sparked by a massive public call to action and successful campaigns from TEA and allies. 

Together we sent thousands of emails, made phone calls, and packed the Council chamber with residents calling for stronger action. During the last City Council meeting of the year, Council voted to advance work on two important climate policies — standards to cut emissions from buildings, and a maximum temperature bylaw to protect Toronto renters from extreme heat.

In Toronto, almost 60% of our climate-warming emissions come from buildings. This means that Toronto’s climate action plan, TransformTO, hinges on implementing strong green building policies.

For several years now, city staff have been working on a plan to help existing buildings gradually get cleaner, healthier, and more energy efficient. Known as Building Emissions Performance Standards (BEPS), it’s a tool that’s being used by other big, like-minded cities with large building emissions — cities like New York, Vancouver, Boston, and Seattle.

This could be a game-changer to not only make our buildings more liveable and efficient to operate, but also to spark a huge amount of local jobs and economic activity.

But to our surprise, the City recently recommended shelving the policy indefinitely, putting Toronto’s climate plan in jeopardy.

TEA worked with Stand.earth and many members of Toronto's climate community to activate thousands of Torontonians, who contacted the Mayor and Councillors, and spoke at the Infrastructure and Environment Committee (IEC). The result: IEC Chair, Councillor Paula Fletcher, successfully moved a motion bringing BEPS back on the table, allowing this important policy development work to continue!

Public support for green buildings and climate action is strong

TEA recently released a poll fielded by Abacus Data showing an overwhelming majority of Torontonians support green building requirements. An impressive 92% of Torontonians support their local government applying building requirements to make buildings safer from extreme weather like heat and flooding.

And support was widespread. Tenants and owners, downtowners and suburbanites – all groups strongly supported green building requirements in Toronto.

People want their governments to protect them by taking action - that’s their job. But a small, vocal minority of climate deniers have worked hard to convince us otherwise. While an overwhelming majority of people support the scientific consensus on climate change, many believe that they are alone. In a recent study surveying 130,000 people around the world, respondents on average believed that only 43 percent of people wanted more action on climate change, when the real number was actually an astounding 89 percent.

How would building emissions performance standards actually work?

Toronto has had green standards in place for new buildings for decades — but no requirements for the buildings that are already standing. That means there are a lot of big, leaky, creaky, gas-guzzling buildings across the city that need fixing up.

The worst-performing buildings are not only polluting, they’re also inefficient and costly to heat and cool. They can harm the health of the people who live and work in them with dirty air, mold, or unsafe temperatures during heat waves.

“Building Emissions Performance Standards” would set requirements for updating the leakiest, most polluting large buildings on a predictable schedule.

For over a year now, the City of Toronto has been working with over 120 groups from different sectors across the City on designing this policy — including tenants, building owners and managers, and environmental groups like TEA.

This plan would require larger buildings (not single-family homes) to meet gradually increasing standards for energy efficiency over time. This is one of the most impactful policies the City can implement to significantly reduce our carbon impact, and get Toronto back on track with its plan to cut emissions.

You can learn more about how this kind of policy has been implemented in other cities, and how it’s being designed in Toronto here: https://beps.taf.ca/